Javier Marías turns down Spanish award

Novelist Javier Marías turns down the Spanish government's award of €20,000,
in a year that's been marked by literary snubs.

Javier Marias has turned down the Spanish government's national narrative prize.Photo: Graziano Arici

By Felicity Capon

11:51AM GMT 01 Nov 2012

One of Spain’s most popular novelists, Javier Marías, has turned down the Spanish government’s national narrative prize of €20,000.

The prize money was awarded to Marías for his novel, The Infatuations. Whilst he expressed gratitude to the jury for appointing him their winner, he reaffirmed his stance on Spanish state-backed literary prizes, claiming, "All my life I have managed to avoid state institutions, regardless of which party was in government, and I have turned down all income from the public purse. I don’t want to be seen as an author who is favoured by any particular government."

Widely tipped as a future Nobel Prize winner, Marías has made it clear that his views only apply to Spanish literary awards, including the prestigious Cervantes prize. It’s not the first time a Spanish cultural figure has snubbed the government’s admiration for its cultural progeny: in 2010, the artist Santiago Sierra turned down Spain’s national arts prize, stating that he was not willing to take a prize from a socialist government that gave money to banks while taking it away from the welfare state.

This month also witnessed the American poet Lawrence Ferlinghetti rejecting an award partly funded by the Hungarian government, over concerns about human rights abuses within the country. He refused the Janus Pannonius International Poetry Prize, worth a staggering 50,000 euros, telling the Hungarian PEN club that ‘since the Prize is partially funded by the present Hungarian government, and since the policies of this right-wing regime tend towards authoritarian rule and the consequent curtailing of freedom of expression and civil liberties, I find it impossible for me to accept the Prize.’

Turning down literary prize money has become something of a trend in recent years. In 2011, the spy-thriller author, John le Carré, asked to be removed from the Man Booker International shortlist, simply stating; ‘I do not compete for literary prizes.’

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It was the same year that the poets Alice Oswald and John Kinsella objected to being nominated for the T S Eliot Prize. The prize, awarded by the Poetry Book Society, struck a sour note with some when the Society agreed to a three-year sponsorship deal with investment firm Aurum. "Poetry should be questioning not endorsing such institutions" claimed Oswald, while Kinsella explained that the investment firm’s business was not something that sat comfortably with his ethical beliefs.

Denunciations such as these can serve to raise awareness of plights and important issues around the world, and Marías’ noble stance will surely gain approval from many of his countrymen, as economic turmoil continues to blight its citizens.

Yet others are less impressed. Last year’s winner of the Spanish prize, Marcos Giralt Torrente, complained, "with this gesture, Marías devalues one of the few Spanish literary prizes that is not subject to the interests of publishing companies".

Critics have also pointed out that Oswald and Kinsella’s withdrawals before the T S Eliot prize had been awarded meant that they could not redirect the money to a cause they supported. Novelist Hari Kunzru rejected the John Llewellyn Rhys Prize in 2003, owing to sponsorship from the Mail on Sunday, a publication he believed to be xenophobic. He requested that the £5,000 be donated to the Refugee Council.

Ferlinghetti recently attempted to direct his award money to a fund supporting free speech cases in Hungary, although was apparently dissatisfied with efforts by Hungarian PEN to meet his requirements.